My Son

How many thousands of millions are - have there been - of us on this planet? Lots, I'd guess. And still.... for those of us with children - for me at least - parenting and the hassle/pleasure of having children is the first and only time it's happened, it's that special.

Case in point is my son.

Every time I look at this boy, I marvel at our lives, at the fact we are in each other's lives, that we are so alike and so different... I guess you could say that our relationship, compared to that of other fathers and sons, is no big thing. Neither of us like baseball or fishing, so we don't have any of those classic male bonding stories to tell of the big one we caught together, or the Little League games won or lost.

The fact is that for most of my son's 16 year life, I was more of the OTHER kind of classic dad, the one who's not there, who's off at business conferences and/or the office such that I might have seen my son briefly in the morning, while he's getting ready for school and I'm getting ready for work.

....And at the other end of the day, I'm coming home late, and he's on the computer or in front of the xbox, or on the phone, or doing his homework (although most of the time, he's so conscientious and smart, he's done his homework long before I get home).

It's only been with my retirement and, ironically, his departure for another country, that we've begun to develop a relationship wherein we talk and share thougths and ideas. We're not very profound the two of us. When I look at all the things, deep and not, that people talk about in their blogs, I consider our chats and conversations to be pretty mundane, talking about Limewire, or the latest laptop, or his surfing in Panama, or my mountain climbing, etc. Not impressive stuff, by any means.

Still, it's us, the two of us talking, and that's a lot more than it used to be, and I wish/hope that we talk a lot more in the future; he's such a wonderful person...